Blame Germany. When Oktoberfest started, as part of an 1810 wedding celebration, I doubt groom Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria was thinking long term. That six day event has grown into a world-wide celebration of all things beer that's still causing hangovers nearly two hundred years later, and it's a great excuse to step outside of ones normal beer preference and try something a little different.
In that spirit, this October we're doing a little event transplanting ourselves, also kickstarted by a recent wedding gathering. For nearly ten years now, a group calling itself Pub Night has terrorized bars across New York City. The format works like this: each week, the "triumverate" that plans that event selects a bar somewhere in or near Manhattan. Early in the week, an e-mail goes out with the location for the week, and the details are posted to the pubnight.com website. People drink, we take some notes on who showed up, rinse (bars are dirty), repeat.
At various points, there have been three other cities that have hosted official Pub Nights: Portland: Maine, St. Louis, and Portland: Oregon. Starting Thursday, October 6th, we're adding Baltimore to that list.
The Brewer's Art was the obvious place to start, as it's a regular haunt for three of our founders; the fourth is still in therapy related to his last visit and feels ready to confront it again. Anyone who orders their beer from a bottle or can at this venue deserves a sound New York-style beatin', because the beers brewed on location are fantastic. There's also lots of great food available. We'll be hanging around the downstairs bar area, because as Terry comments the yuppified upstairs is "full of French cuisine and shit". So not our scene.
Baltimore Pub Night will continue every Thursday night after this inaugural event. Official mailing list instructions will follow (we'll so stop spamming you after that). We hope you can join us for the launch of our latest excuse to go out during the week.
--Greg, Terry, John, and Robin, your Baltimore Pub Night Gang of Four